We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, April 29. 2015

If you were a man of forty-five, employed, not actually a serial killer, and had fewer than five nostrils, you did well. The women, though desperate, were often attractive, smart, good-looking, warm-blooded, and great people.

OMG--Does anyone know the address for that mother whacking on her son in the Baltimore riots? I would gladly send a donation to her! How are we gonna recognize her in a positive way before Stephanopolous and the other liberal press cows destroy her and belittle him? Why oh why can't we get organized?

Call the Baltimore Child Protective Services. They are no doubt preparing an enforcement action against that mother. Just painful enough so that she never dares discipline her child again.

On the upside, the CPS bureaucrats could be overrun by the riot when they enter the neighborhood to "regulate" this woman. I wouldn't wish rape or murder on them, but if they got smacked around...that would be justice.

Call the Baltimore Child Protective Services. They are no doubt preparing an enforcement action against that mother. Just painful enough so that she never dares discipline her child again.

On the upside, the CPS bureaucrats could be overrun by the riot when they enter the neighborhood to "regulate" this woman. I wouldn't wish r@pe or murder on them, but if they got smacked around...that would be justice.

The video of the mom hitting her son for taking part in the Baltimore riots as well other brave people who acted against the rioters and for the police and city give hope that things can be turned around. Those people are very brave indeed.

There was an interview with the mother and she is a single mom with five or six kids! As brave as she is and as hard as she works to raise her kids as best she can, her situation is part of the problem. I would venture a guess that most of the rioters don't live with their fathers and some may not even know their fathers. On another interview another woman, correctly in my mind, said that one of the problems was the lack of strong men.

Of course the demoncrat solution is more government spending in Baltimore, but no amount of spending is going to bring back morality, or fathers, and the all the money the government has thrown at education has not improved the education system or given the kids in Baltimore or dozens of other inner cities any more opportunity. So much of that money has just incentivized destructive behavior.

So often, people on the left who genuinely want to improve things try to do it by attacking the symptom but don't seem to have any interest in attacking what is causing the symptom. The rest of them are just happy to use the plight of the poor to their political advantage and are not only not interested in attacking a cause but they attack the notion that the cause is the cause.

I highly recommend this recent Heather McDonald article parsing a recent sociology book on neighborhoods like Baltimore's only in Philadelphia. The books author is unable to see that her "friends" choices make their troubles, not the court system that puts out warrants for failure to appear, etc. In fact, the books author gets so involved she almost becomes a co-conspirator to murder.

As McDonald points out, this "researcher" gives short shrift to the law-abiding in the neighborhood who already observe a curfew to avoid the "poor victims" at night. The law-abiding who are also at risk of a police officer trying to make his quota. If there is to be help to the neighborhood, those are the ones to target. Ones probably not unlike the mother shown now that she is older.

The story on the question, "Could Blazing Saddles be made today", says yes. That grosser, more ethically insulting films are still made.

Wrong answer. It could not be made today because none of the films mentioned have the wit, the writing or the talent needed to made Blazing Saddles.
I want a movie that I can laugh or cry at, not cringe.

There is absolutely no way "Blazing Saddles" could be made today.
Very few producers or directors have the leeway to deal with themes like that. Quentin Tarantino was given tremendous leeway with "Django Unchained" but mainly because the black man winds up killing all the 'bad white folk'. Quentin's writing tends to be over the top black on white reactionary tales anyway.

"Saddles" was the purest form of comedy - highlighting the hypocrisy and idiocy of racism. My favorite line (since I'm Irish) was "We'll take the niggers and the Chinks, but we don't want the Irish."

It's a line I'd still use regularly today if people didn't balk at the language itself as being offensive, regardless of context.

In the end, like most of Tarantino's stuff, the black guy wins. But he wins by guile, intelligence, and without alienating the people he's trying to win over. He isn't appeasing the people who oppose him, but he isn't fighting them aggressively either.

He's just being himself, which seems to be a decent guy doing a reasonable job in a difficult situation. His domination of Mongo (another link I have to the movie as it was a nickname of mine when I was younger since I was once dubbed a "pawn in game of life" when I entered the workplace) is a singular act of bravado and humor. Even Mongo knows he can deal with Sheriff Bart physically, but respects the manner in which he was bested.

Like most good comedies, it deals with difficult subjects effectively and honestly, and tries to be inclusive and equal in the manner by which it deals out its insults, such as they are ("where the white women at?").

But comedy is not viewed as a meaningful tool of discussion today. You're deemed out of the discussion if you use it, because all discussions of this sort must be serious, unless it's the offended party making the joke, and then you must accept it as a joke even if it is very mean spirited. Which is why "Saddles" succeeds where others fail...there's not a single mean-spirited part to it.

It's just good fun. But we can't have fun today. Too many trigger warnings come with fun.

It's not a movie, but the new Fox show 'Backstrom' does a good job of slamming everybody. Although, it does heap it all on the one character rather than have an ensemble. The rest of the cast are hard at work trying to roll back Backstrom's slams on precious groups. Better yet, it is set in Portland with only the occasional appearance of a Porlandia denizen.

I'm intrigued by the "price-fixing" article. If algorithms are better at overcoming Prisoner's Dilemma, as the article suggests, then that is a good thing. In that event, everybody wins.

The assumption is, in this situation, that the consumer is the one losing because they don't get a 'failure' from one of the competitive entities (in this example, the consumer is the jailer seeking the cooperation of one prisoner). But this is hardly the case.

While the jailer 'wins' if one prisoner defects, consumers do not win if one business defects. That is, they don't win in the long run. There is a temporary gain, as consumers utilize the short term drop in price, but over time the price adjusts and will likely adjust even higher as supply becomes more constrained. The broad swathe of consumers lose, while only an enlightened and/or lucky few 'win'.

Solving for prisoner's dilemma allows prices to remain a bit more stable, and more equal across the larger swathe of consumers.

The essential problem of price-fixing is that it can never be adequately defined.

You can get in trouble for setting your prices "too high" (usually defined as collusion, even if none took place), you can get in trouble for setting your prices "too low" (dumping and undermining competition) and you can get in trouble for letting the market set pricing (in examples like those after a natural disaster - GOUGING).

It's possible that collusion, fixing, dumping and gouging all occur to a small degree from time to time. But they are never long term solutions and as the article points out eventually the market undermines the process.

Even if algorithms can adjust and solve for this faster, there will still be fallout and rejection. Eventually one businessman will realize he can program his algorithm to take advantage of his competitor's more staid bot....and dump prices to move product. If self-learning is the key to these bots, and it is, then it won't be long before they figure it out.

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